Ask Lemmy

This.

And sometimes she’ll just stare at a wall.

My cat managed to crash a fresh install of Debian Stable to an unrecoverable state, just by walking across the keyboard.
I had to reinstall, but of course she still got treats for doing such a good job as software tester.

Cat tax

He puts himself to bed! There’s a blanket on the lounge - he wraps himself up in it, and goes to sleep, for hours. If I can’t find him, I look for the breathing lump inside the lounge blanket. I used to think the depictions of Garfield wrapped in a blanket in his bed were just, well, comic book stuff, but no, some cats do this lol.

He also knocks on the door when he needs his toilet changed (we use litter tray liners), to let me know to do it. Yes milord. Work work.

Another one - he’s bad at climbing and has realised when he wants to get up somewhere high (to watch the world from above), he doesn’t actually have to climb up himself. He can just squeal and whimper if I’m in the room and I’ll lift him up there. Hahaha cute lazy bugger.

Kika (16?yo): she likes to be petted, but she's wants to be petted in a very specific corner of the house - currently her cardboard box, but it changes over time. So she begs me "pet me, pet me!", then as I move my hand to pet her she runs to the box, and keeps meowing. Until I go pet her in the cardboard box.

Siegfrieda (7?yo): I don't know what's weirder: looking at the rain and meowing at me as if saying "can't you stop it?", watching anime with me, or the "overly attached girlfriend" face that she does when someone is eating yoghurt.

Comes up and puts a paw on my arm or leg, but only when she feels the problem is serious. It could be water, food, liter box, or just a notion that I need to give attention due to hours working on some project or something; usually when I'm seriously hurting or sleep deprived. I'm always present, only ever leaving for doctors or a physical therapy routine. I'm accessible for both cats most of the time. The older seems to intuit not to abuse the gesture or use it often. When she does put her paw on me like that, I always look into the issue, so we've developed it as a form of direct communication that seems to work. I didn't train her to do this, I did however train her to be quiet using positive reinforcement. We got the older cat about 6 months after I was disabled, so we've been through a lot together in the last 10 years.

I don't have a cat.

I have a weird-ish cat that sometimes follows me on my walks. I'm his best friend when we're hiking buddies. When I see him on the trail, he's all meowing at me, rubbing up against my legs trying to get me to pet him. And if I stop petting him, he bites me. So that makes me think I'm special.

But, if I happen to go over to my neighbor's house (his owner), he won't come near me. He runs off if I try to speak to him or coax him to come over to me.

Till next time I see him on the trail, and we're back to love bites and heavy petting.

I have a cat with a heart condition who sleeps in the middle of the floor with his eyes open. He is all black too so you can't see if he's breathing. It's gotten me just so many times.

Another cat doesn't eat directly from the bowl, instead she sits next to the bowl and spears food on her claws and licks it off like it's a fork.

Our cat loooves to climb the clothing rack. Seem to not understand that it's not the easiest object to climb..

He runs over and lays in the sink, whenever someone is taking a shower.

EDIT: example:

My almost 18 year old lady makes me play follow the leader every morning. She needs a pill, but before she'll let me grab her we have to walk around the house so she can show me the things that are hers.

My 4 year old likes to watch screens and is particularly enamored with the little webcam views in Teams. So he shows up almost every morning for my stand-up meeting.

I don't know how weird it is but my cat seems to understand that when faces are talking from the computer screen my hands will be free for the more important duty of skritching.

She has become a hit during team meetings, to the point where one time she was sleeping and didn't come prompting half the team to send concerned DMs.

He chews on everything - paper bags? Food. Our wooden furnature? Tasty! The metal folding chairs? Yum!

This same cat also breifly learned to turn off the internet and force us out when we were being too boring (such as when trying to fall asleep). We started locking him in a room overnight for a little while, and he seemed to forget how after that, luckily.

When I was younger my mom had cats(started normal 1 or 2, got insane... Highest number I remember is 37 but now she has 0). One cat was a hunter through and through. Basically there was a hall way that ended in the kitchen and my room was the first door from the kitchen. I was sitting at my computer desk, the cat was on top of the fridge. The cat jumped up the fridge, hit ground, jumped again reached my door frame, backfliped off it, caught a fly in it's front paws, landed, ate fly, looked at me like "aren't you impressed?"

Another time... Same cat actually... Another cat had a litter of kittens(old enough to walk and see etc but still kittens).. Hunter jumps in my living room window with a live chipmunk. Puts it down and calls the kittens. The basically encircle the chipmunk and the hunter removes its paw and steps back. Nothing happens. Chipmunk is terrified. One kitten walks up and swats it. Chipmunk runs. Hunter chases, grabs it and brings it back to the circle. This cycle repeats until the kittens have a good idea as to how to attack pray. Hunter kills chipmunk, at which point I intervene and put it outside. It's was like watching a savage show but it was also just nature playing course. Honestly really interesting... Not idolizing the violence and death but the watching one animal teach its family how to hunt and eat.

One of my cats loves to jump up on people's shoulders. We've been practicing, and I can walk around the house (slowly) with him up there.

Cat's not even mine but if he sees me when I am outside and I don't stop to pick him up and cuddle him, he slaloms between my feet and bites my ankles until I do.

Our youngest comes into the house mewing until someone replies.

Every night he jumps onto the computer keyboard until it beeps. I tried turning the computer off and he turned it on somehow.

I don't know why. It's after I've fed him. I always pick him up and bring him to the bedroom after.

My current oldest was a stray for about 4-5 months and she seemed to regard anything wrapped in plastic as a valid food source. We assumed that reason is that she had been scavenging garbage.

One of my favorite "new kitten" moments was coming downstairs to find that she had taken about 12 sample bites from a package of toilet paper. She stopped doing that.

I swear we fed her well, but she had some habits from life on the streets.

After my cat takes a shit, she'll run around and yowl. Not meow, yowl. She never yowls except post-poo. But she doesn't want to interact with me during this time. If I acknowledge her then she stops and just meows and walks around regular. So I just let her have her post shit crazy sesh. Like, I get it, I feel great after dropping one, so its good she feels comfortable enough to express her after shit joy.

We had a cat that loves to be spun on our office chair. He would dig his claws into the seat while we spun the chair around and around. When it stopped, his head would do the dizzy circular-nod thing. Then he’d meow at us until we did it again. And again. And again.

One of mine is obsessed with plastic wrappers. She'll run from any area of the house as soon as she hears one. She'll steal them if they aren't thrown into the garbage can with a lid. She's always sad when I won't let her have it.. she doesn't understand it's for her own good 😭

He sighs when not enough attention.

The cat gets fresh water daily but wants to drink out of the bathroom sink. Water, soap, and toothpaste. Yum.